The Playlist: Harry Styles and Beth Ditto Take the Plunge and Go Solo

Harry Styles of One Direction has released his debut solo single, “Sign of the Times.”CreditDanny Moloshok/Reuters

Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos — and anything else that strikes them as intriguing. You can listen to this playlist on Spotify here. Like this Playlist? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com, and sign up for our Louder newsletter here.

Harry Styles, ‘Sign of the Times’

Have you ever had a morning where you just couldn’t get out of bed? No matter how urgent the world’s needs? Even though you know all eyes will be fixed on you, looking to dissect your every move? When even your most game efforts feel phoned in? You thrash around, hoping to move from the plane of slumber to the plane of alertness. You roll from one side to the other, grab the pillow, kick the covers away. You convince yourself that you’re up, you’re present, you’re alive. But somehow, you’re still asleep. JON CARAMANICA

Jack White, ‘Battle Cry’

Jack White’s first single since his 2014 album, “Lazaretto,” is a curveball, a little blast of noise to remind listeners he’s working. “Battle Cry” begins and ends with samples of Native American drumming and chanting — are those war whoops? In between, it’s got handclaps, shouts of “Hey!,” a stomping beat and a brazen guitar riff bearing down hard on two notes; there’s also a stretch of squealing, nasal, heavily processed guitar in place of a solo. It’s as if Mr. White made a list of parameters from the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army”: An allusion to Native American lore, a big beat, a huge riff and something a crowd can shout. And then he came up with a track holding all of them, just because he can. J.P.

Halsey, ‘Now or Never’

Even when “Closer,” the collaboration between the Chainsmokers and Halsey, became an inescapable megahit last year, Halsey seemed somehow too cool for it. She’s an assured, if somewhat derivative singer who still feels like a skeptical pop interloper. The worry was that the Chainsmokers — or at minimum, the desire for Chainsmokers-level success — would rub off on her. With that in mind, “Now or Never” is worrisome; it’s among her least vocally present songs (with a couple of blatant Rihanna-isms to boot), and moves at a slow, neutered creep. And it’s deeply effective, even if it’s not deeply Halsey. J.C.

Overcoats, ‘Kai’s Song’

Overcoats — the two-woman group Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell — harmonize constantly and consonantly in the style of old-line country brother acts, from the Stanley Brothers to the Everly Brothers. But the songs they write aren’t country. “Kai’s Song” is an electronic hymn, floating over sustained keyboard chords and digital drum sounds. It’s a song about whether romance can survive change (“I know you don’t like what you see/But I’m not going back to how I used to be,” they sing, together). As the chorus wonders “Are you coming back to me?,” the song’s mostly major chords turn to a minor one and eventually drop away, leaving the duo in close harmony as the question hangs in the air. J.P.

Karen Elson, ‘Call Your Name’

“Call Your Name” — from Karen Elson’s second album, “Double Roses” — is a laconic song of mourning, expansively rendered. It could be an elegy; it could be the aftermath of a breakup. The chorus concludes, ominously, “You’ll be the death of me.” The song gathers considerable gravity from the production by Patrick Carney and Jonathan Wilson. It starts out folky but grows fully orchestral, deployinga 1960s-style folk-psychedelic band (complete with tootling electric organ and insistently pounding tom-toms in the background) and lavish arrangements with strings and chimes. It goes right to the brink of overkill, and balances there. J.P.

Jason Moran, ‘Winds’

The pianist Jason Moran and the Bandwagon, his trio, aren’t worried about cultivating mystery or staying ahead of anybody’s curve. The band’s work together over the last 17 years seems to represent not a progression or a series of redirections so much as a deepening. The group has honed a language unto itself: folksy, sophisticated and full of bluesy idiosyncrasy. On Saturday, via Bandcamp, Mr. Moran surprise-released “Thanksgiving at the Vanguard,” a live album the trio recorded last year containing a full helping of originals that the trio has not recorded before. On “Winds,” Mr. Moran maintains a sense of drifting momentum, octaves chiming in his right hand while the drummer Nasheet Waits and the bassist Tarus Mateen pull away from the beat, upward and outward. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

Beth Ditto, ‘Fire’

For well over a decade, Beth Ditto was the frontwoman of Gossip, a compellingly bare-bones and electrically funky dance-punk outfit. “Fire” — the first single from her new solo album “Fake Sugar,” due in June — has some of that band’s taut ferocity. Ms. Ditto is singing with more restraint than before, but the thumping urgency remains. J.C.

Public Service Broadcasting, ‘Progress’

Public Service Broadcasting, an English duo, samples film dialogue and constructs surging instrumental tracks around it: full-bodied rock, dance-music pulses, funk grooves. The duo also starts with big concepts. “Progress” comes from its next album, “Every Valley,” which traces the collapse of the mining industry in Wales and its consequences. In “Progress,” a rock buildup leads into a bona fide pop chorus — high voices singing, “We believe in progress!” — between spoken snippets that predict an automated world where machines will do the heavy labor and humans will contribute “brains, not brawn.” But as industrial centers have been finding out, automation often means lost jobs, not better ones, and the track’s optimistic sound is fully ironic. To that point, the video celebrates automation replacing band members. J.P.

Alex G, ‘Proud’

Sometimes sleep is a beautiful thing. “Proud” is all haze and light touch from a singer-songwriter who is never quite fully in the room but who holds you at rapt attention nonetheless. His earliest songs were far sparser than this, and yet “Proud” feels just as interior, and as singular. J.C.

R.LUM.R, ‘Frustrated’

The chorus is just eight words, repeated twice: “I’m frustrated over you/Frustrated, I’m a fool.” And it’s slammed home in a production that’s minimal at first — an adamantly slow tempo, deep bass tones, viscous wah-ing synthesizer chords, some scattered percussion sounds — but grows monumental. The internal space just makes the R&B songwriter and falsetto belter R.Lum.R (as Reggie Williams calls himself) sound more isolated and thwarted as his accusations and self-doubt escalate: “Whose final scene it is will be left up to you,” he decides, passive-aggressively. R.Lum.R has also released a solo acoustic performance of the song. But it just comes across as a private complaint, while the electronic version is a full-blown crisis. J.P.

Dawn, ‘LA’

It doesn’t exactly look like “These L.A. streets are killing me,” as Dawn Richard sings while preening and dancing glamorously through Los Angeles locations in this belated video for a track from her 2016 album “Redemption.” All the better to draw new attention to a thoroughly eccentric song, one that references both Los Angeles and Ms. Richards’s birthplace, Louisiana, while going through multiple sonic metamorphoses. The song starts as choppy, programmed, trap-flavored R&B, but segues into fusion rock with overdriven keyboards and distorted lead guitar. When that fades out, there’s a surprise coda: a minute-long instrumental from Trombone Shorty, a local hero in New Orleans, overdubbing his trumpets and trombones into flamboyant free jazz and then a grooving horn section, unmistakably from Louisiana. J.P.

Kneebody, ‘The Balloonist’

The jazz-rock quintet Kneebody drew a lot of attention two years ago for its album with the electronic experimenter Daedelus. But the band has been around for more than 10 years, developing a cult following for its matrix-like tunes and punctilious execution. Kneebody is back to doing its own thing on “Anti-Hero,” a politically inspired and warm-blooded new album out last month on Motéma. The group celebrates the record’s release with a concert at Le Poisson Rouge on Saturday. This video, whichhas its premiere here,accompanies “The Balloonist,” written by band member Shane Endsley. Muscular drumming and distorted, suspended harmonies offset the almost nonchalant lucidity of Mr. Endsley’s trumpet and Ben Wendel’s tenor saxophone. G.R.

Cayetana, ‘Certain for Miles’

Augusta Koch, the guitarist and singer in the three-woman Philadelphia indie-rock band Cayetana, starts “Certain for Miles” singing, “I always tend to doubt what everyone seems so certain about,” as she quietly strums a sustained tremolo from her guitar and an old girl-group beat thumps underneath. A minute later, grunge-style, tremolo turns to distorted strum and the beat kicks harder. Ms. Koch still questions herself: “When the world bears down on me/Will I laugh at its audacity and be able to start again?” But with the beat crashing louder and the guitar rearing up, her conclusion becomes inevitable: “I’ll figure it out.” J.P.

Imelda May, ‘Should’ve Been You’

“Should’ve Been You” is a parting shot at a neglectful partner: “Who takes care of me?,” the Irish singer Imelda May demands. “It should’ve been you.” Ms. May has a voice made for an earlier rock era — strong, assured and able to open up to belting and keep building from there — and “Should’ve Been You” constructs a fully retro Wall of Sound. But the video turns an individual gripe — “What I wanted was just too much” — into a modern statement of solidarity. Striding down a London street and staring down the camera, Ms. May gathers her own Women’s March behind her as her righteousness crests: a determinedly inclusive group, some holding signs (“Women’s Rights = Human Rights”) and others wearing pink pussy hats. The political lurks in the personal. J.P.

Jon Pareles has been The Times's chief pop music critic since 1988. A musician, he has played in rock bands, jazz groups and classical ensembles. He majored in music at Yale University. @JonPareles

Jon Caramanica is a pop music critic for The Times and the host of the Popcast. He also writes the men's Critical Shopper column for Styles. He previously worked for Vibe magazine, and has written for the Village Voice, Spin, XXL and more. @joncaramanica